Unmasked: The autistic women authoring a better future

Unmasked: The autistic women authoring a better futureImage caption, Alex Morgan built a website to provide hard to find resources and information to autistic womenByFederica BedendoNorth East and CumbriaPublishedJust nowMasking, camouflaging, trying to blend in - this is what women with autism have been practising to navigate a world that for decades did not even recognise their existence. Having finally been diagnosed as adults, many have taken to print to shed light on the reality, variety and complexity of these once hidden lives.When Alex Morgan took an online autism test to pass the time while ill with Covid, it had never occurred to her she might have the condition. When she saw the result, everything immediately made sense to her."I had all these misconceptions about what autism was," she says. "I thought it was monosyllabic boys, going around looking at their feet and collecting information about trains."Comedian Fern Brady writes in her book Strong Female Character about how she was left to cope with her diagnosis as an adult through the posts of "19-year-old girls on TikTok"."I could only find information for parents of autistic kids. There was just an absolute void of information."Sarah Hendrickx had spent years diagnosing autism in boys and men yet says she "failed miserably to apply it to myself".These stories and more highlight just how little was known - even in the 2020s - about the condition as it presents in women and girls.The mask slipsOther than their autism diagnosis coming later in life, these women share a desire to fill that knowledge gap.Neuroscientist and autism expert Gina Rippon says an increase in late autism diagnoses around the start of this decade revealed the myriad of coping mechanisms women had been employing."Most of them had been trying to hide their autism," Rippon explains. "They were camouflaging, they were desperate to be social and wanted to fit in."Imag...